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The Pillars of the Earth | 
| Author: Ken Follett
Publisher: NAL Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy Used: $5.98
You Save: $14.02 (70%)
New (29) Used (55) Collectible (1) from $5.98
Rating:  1249 reviews
Sales Rank: 6629
Media: Paperback
Pages: 976
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1.8
ISBN: 0451207149
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
UPC: 051855019006
EAN: 9780451207142
ASIN: 0451207149
Publication Date: February 4, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Book Description
Ken Follett had long been a staple of the bestseller lists for his novels of intrigue and espionage. Then came The Pillars of the Earth, a grand novel of epic storytelling that readers and critics quickly hailed as his crowning achievement. Now, The Pillars of the Earth is available for the first time to a new audience of readers, in this attractive new trade paperback edition.
In 12th-century England, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral signals the dawn of a new age. This majestic creation will bond clergy and kings, knights and peasants together in a story of toil, faith, ambition and rivalry. A sweeping tale of the turbulent middle ages, The Pillars of the Earth is a masterpiece from one of the world's most popular authors.
"A novel of majesty and power...Will hold you, fascinate you, surround you." --Chicago Sun-Times
"A towering tale...There's murder, arson, treachery, torture, love, and lust...A good time can be had by all." --New York Daily News
"Touches all human emotions...truly a novel to get lost in." --Cosmopolitan
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1244 more reviews...
 Worst book I've read in a long time August 27, 2008
C. Ciancutti (San Francisco Bay Area)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I originally read The Pillars of the Earth when it was published in 1989. I enjoyed it at the time. I was 14.
More recently I had heard about the sequel and decided it was time to re-read the original beforehand. Wow. I'm having the hardest time forcing myself to get through it -- like some of the other reviewers mentioned I'm scanning the chapters for plot points to avoid the misery of wading through the writing. It's pulpy, the characters are one-dimensional, the prose is ponderous, and *everything* is laid out for the reader. The plot is interesting, but not novel. It's incredibly overrated, and I recommend you skip this one.
 Review: Pillars of the Earth August 25, 2008
Douglas Robert Yarnold (Loxahatchee, Florida)
This book was a true pleasure to read. And I enjoyed reading it on my Kindle as well. I am now reading Ken Follet's sequal to this book, which takes place several hundred years later. I give it 5 stars.
Drivel August 24, 2008
S. Smith (Atlanta, GA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have read several of Ken Follett's books, and this one is pure yack. My opinion is that it was ghost written. It's disjointed, contrived, wandering, puerile and, as a result, almost unreadable. I've enjoyed his other books, but this one is junk. It's as though a few basic ideas and a lot of arcane words (repetitively used) were fed into a computer program and spat back out. Forget the sequel. Don't waste your money on either book...sorry, Ken, but this one is way below par.
WHICH IS SEXIER, PILLARS OR WORLD WITHOUT END? August 20, 2008
Karina Mathews (LOS ANGELES)
ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!!! MUST READ, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THAT TIME PERIOD AND ARE A FAN OF CATHEDRAL ARCHITECTURE. PLUS SO MUCH HOT AND STEAMY ROMANCE!
 Have patience, it's worth it August 20, 2008
Fiona Guillory
I received this book as a gift, and I was not terribly impressed with it at first. With some encouragement from the gift-giver, I continued on. The story was lovely, and it was worth the almost 1,000 pages of effort. It is an informed and well-written story with some very interesting characters. There are some great morality points, too. You have your standard bibilical allusion winding through the novel. Follet was careful, though, to make it subtle, and I appreciated that. It would have been too easy to tell a Sunday school Bible lesson while talking about the building of a cathedral.
Having read the book, I am glad that I persevered, but I had some serious problems with this book, too. First, there are some really graphic scenes of sex and violence that just were not necessary. Of course, this book is about a period of time in 12th Century England called "the Anarchy," which saw its fair share of graphic scenes. I was very disturbed by the scenes, though, and I wish the author had a more graceful way of writing them. I think Follett went a little overboard with the architectural descriptions, too. I believe he probably was greatly inspired by the cathedrals he saw while doing research for the novel and wanted to share it with his readers. That is obvious with in the verbosity of his descriptions. I couldn't visualize what he was describing, though, so I was lost in much of the master builder's musings over his designs. Overall, the characters were good. It seems, though, that Follett spent a great deal of time thinking about his heroes and left the rest to develop themselves. The women in the novel are especially odd to me. They are your basic "strong women" as imagined by a male writer. I have never met a woman like Follett describes. I doubt he has either, but it seems like he wants to. The evil characters are also too much. One example is the man who can't get aroused unless he is with a child and only if he hurts her. It is just too easy to hate a character like that. Once again, I wish there had been more grace.
Having said that, I think there are some great strengths to the book, too. Although the characters are at times too much to be believed, I loved the fact that we were able to watch them grow, learn, and age. We watch their lives over the course of almost 40 years, and we experience with them all the great events of their lives. Follett did a good job with that. In fact, I think he wrote the characters better as they aged. I also loved the twisting and turning the story takes. So as not to give anything away, I will only say that the characters all experience some ups and downs in their lives. Just when you think Follett has said all he could say, a new story begins. Still, he connects them seamlessly. My favorite part of the story is the ending. I sometimes get very angry with authors of long books who write anticlimactic endings. This is not one of those.
If you are willing to give this book some time and effort, it is really an enjoyable read and an interesting look at possibly the most turbulent time in English history.
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